When Ketchup Becomes a Food Group

You’d think after 18 years as a professional chef preparing all kinds of food for thousands of people in countless settings, I’d find cooking for my family of four a breeze. Not so much. It’s hard to get inspired to cook dinner when a major criterion is that it has to taste good with ketchup. It can be daunting making meals three times every day that satisfy all of our taste buds and have nutritional value.

As long as my children start to melt down at five o’clock and spill every single beverage poured for them, I’ve decided not to prepare meals from scratch at dinnertime–it’s just too stressful. Instead, I cook dishes when everyone is happier and then serve them later on. In the morning, my kids sit at the cooking table and help prepare (and eat) the ingredients.

In an hour or two, I can make several plain dishes that will be dressed up quickly before a meal like:

Sometimes I think about writing a cookbook for people with young kids, so challenging is it to continue to eat well at home as a parent (even when one of us is a professional chef!). I think I’ll call it “When Ketchup Becomes a Food Group.”